Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 12

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Village pump (technical) archive  
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Contents

[edit] Meta-Wiki

What's the technical page on "wikimedia" meta-wiki, i've been looking but there doesn't seem to be a page. SKYNET X7000 (talk) 15:40, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

There are only two discussion boards, m:Metapub and m:Meta:Babel. You can read the descriptions for each. Not being 100% sure of what your question is, I'd say that Metapub would be the better location. EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:49, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, i just wanted to know just in case if i need to ask technical questions on "wikimedia" meta-wiki. SKYNET X7000 (talk) 15:51, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Special:Newpages

So on Special:Newpages you have the option to "hide bots" means you hide the edits made by bots. But if you click and enable this option,a nd then try to view a page length other than the 50 most recent new pages, it resets the option to show all bot new pages. Then if you click to enable the "Hide bots" option, it resets to the 50 most recent new pages. One work around I've discovered is to apppend this text to the end of the URL, once you click the page length you want to view "&hidebots=1". Basically your turning this link:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Newpages&namespace=0&hideliu=&hidepatrolled=&limit=500&offset=0 into this link:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Newpages&namespace=0&hideliu=&hidepatrolled=&limit=500&offset=0&hidebots=1 What I'm wondering is if this isn't a page error that should be fixed in the way URLs are genreated from the links? Mbisanz (talk) 23:20, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Definitely a bug. Changing the number of pages to view shouldn't affect the bot hide option, if already selected. Similarly, changing to the bot hide option shouldn't reset the number of pages shown to 50 (the default). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:34, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I reported this as bugzilla:12283 a few days ago and it is fixed in svn. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:54, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I think your report addressed this saem thing with Patrolled edits, but as of now, the patrolled edits show/hide feature is working correctly, but the bots show/hide isn't. Could they have fixed one and not the other. ? Mbisanz (talk) 00:04, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
If you follow the links and can read PHP, the diff of the change is available online [1]. It looks like they took care of all the parameters, which is what I expected when I filed the bug report (the devs are pretty good at fixing things correctly). The most likely scenario is that the code is not live yet; it only gets pushed onto the actual site servers every few days. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:16, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Test for protection status

Is there a way for a page to query it's own protection status? A magic word or parser function would be most helpful. Andrwsc (talk) 17:14, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

All magic words are listed here. Currently no type of parser function or magic word can detect protection status, due to caching I believe. The only way to do it would be through JavaScript; I'm not sure what, if anything, has been written in JavaScript to detect protection status. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:06, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
There is a built-in JavaScript variable for protection status, an array called wgRestrictionEdit. However, JavaScript hacks tend to be, well, hacky ({{USERNAME}}, for example). GracenotesT § 20:16, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. Yes, I knew that there is no current magic word or parser function for this — I was suggesting that it might be a useful addition. I will play around with the JavaScript and see if I can make something work. Basically, the problem I'm trying to solve is that I manage a set of about a thousand templates (Category:Flag template system), some of which need protection for high-use and some of which do not. I use one template (Template:Country showdata) to self-document this large set, and it would be very convenient for that one template to render the appropriate protection notice automatically. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:56, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I could generate a list of protected templates in the category so they can be tagged, if you wish. Integration of protection notices into the site interface is sadly lacking in MediaWiki: ideally, we shouldn't be using template like {{pp-semi-vandalism}}, but rather have a notice built into the page's HTML. GracenotesT § 17:23, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
It would be quite difficult to get Mediawiki to properly categorize protected pages; the templates do that as well as displaying messages. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:30, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict, reply to Gracenotes) Well, about a week ago, User:East718 protected all the templates in Category:Country data templates, so I simply added {{pp-template}} to Template:Country showdata to tag all of them in a single swoop. Therefore, your lst isn't necessary, but thanks for the offer. However, I'm not so sure that they all needed to be protected. Yes, some flag icons have ultra-high usage (tens of thousands of transclusions), but some others have only a small handful of transclusions, so a "one size fits all" approach is probably not appropriate. Before I started unprotecting the low-usage ones, I wanted to see if there was a better way to tag the ones still left protected, rather than manually tagging them, hence my question here. Fully agree with you that this should be automatic for any page!! — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:38, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
(←) What you are looking for can be achieved with what we've got. Make one protected template, {{Maz}}, with cascading protection. Silently transclude the templates that you want protected. Make it so that {{Maz|{{{PAGENAME}}}}} returns nonblank for the pages that it transcludes (via a long switch statement). Then you can use a parser function in {{Country showdata}} to test whether to display the protection banner. Or just add the protection template by hand to the pages that are protected; it only needs to be added once. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:53, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I like this! Thanks, Carl, I'll work on that. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:55, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Cascade protection sounds like a great idea for this; long #switch statement does not, given tens of thousands of transclusions of some icons, as Andrwsc said. Simply protecting all of them isn't a bad idea, imho. GracenotesT § 01:49, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I assume this will be in the noinclude section of the flag template; does a change to template A in the noinclude section of template B cause pages that transclude B to be rerendered? — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:11, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
When a template is changed, only pages that actually transclude the template onto a page are re-rendered. With the example Template:whatever, if Template:whatever/doc is changed, only Template:whatever will re-render, assuming /doc is in a <noinclude> tag. All pages that transclude Template:whatever will not be re-render until Template:whatever is changed. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:38, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
My concern is that the #switch statement would be executed any time the tens of thousands of pages are edited/purged, but I'm not familiar enough with MediaWiki parsing to know whether this is the case. GracenotesT § 02:41, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
The #switch statement would be called from Template:Country showdata, which is only transcluded for flag template documentation. For example, Template:Country data United States is transcluded tens of thousands of times, but only if you look at that template page directly would you see the output of Template:Country showdata. Therefore, I don't think a big-ass switch statement is a bad thing. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:39, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
The question is if purging a page also purges the pages transcluded on it... pokes MediaWiki developers GracenotesT § 16:06, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
No; otherwise every time a page using {{unreferenced}} was edited, every page that transcluded it would be recompiled, which is not the case. The layout being discussed here is:
Template A: has template M in a noinclude section
Template B: has template M in a noinclude section
Template M: transcludes A and B
If template A is edited, this will not cause B to be recompiled. If M is edited, A and B will be recompiled, but not pages that transclude A or B, because M is in the noinclude section. This is already a common setup when M is a shared documentation page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:18, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I haven't dealt with templates too much recently, and basically forgot that transclusion has nothing to do with the state of the transcluded page – merely its wikitext. I had almost convinced myself that the {{templatesnotice}} system (which I designed!) was a hog of server resources. Given that, the switch statement should be fine. If the majority of country data templates are unprotected, I suppose it should check {{PAGENAME}} against a switched list of protected ones, and vice versa. Sorry if I'm being too fretful about performance: it could be because I'm optimizing some Java code at the moment :P GracenotesT § 16:32, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] #log: x

I'm tooling around with a way to change template:USCensusPop so that it shows average increase per year rather than per decade, since that is a rather meaningless statistic. In order to do so, it's necessary to use a log function. I found a reference to {{ #log: x }} which, when x is given to be 1000 for instance, it should evaluate to 3. I noticed this way doesn't work. So what's missing? What am I not doing right? D. F. Schmidt (talk) 08:13, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

That apparent parserfunction {{#log:x}} is probably part of an extension not installed on Wikipedia. The usable mathmatical functions are limited to #expr, AFAIK. --Splarka (rant) 08:55, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cannot see wikipedia pictures

Take from Cannot see wikipedia pictures:

I have discovered that page contributions are very well monitored. So I realized that someone would review this matter. While using Ubuntu Linux 7.10 and the Firefox browser, I cannot display any pictures in Wikipedia. I have reviewed my preferences and find no where to set allow pictures.
Does anyone have an idea why this is happening?
Thanks in advance and...
Kindest Regards,
Paul Flint

User:Flintiii posted this as an article, which I have since deleted. I personally know nothing about this technical issues, so any response should be directed at Flintiii. Thanks.-Andrew c [talk] 13:44, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

When this happens (especially with Firefox), it's often because the user's accidentally blocked the Wikipedia upload server; it's easy to do with ad-blocking software by mistake. --ais523 15:53, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
This often happens to websites that put a big fund raising banner at the top of each page, as I am afraid we do. A user understandably blocks the advert at the top of the page and then all content from that server is blocked. That is why clever spammers put their banners on a different server. 1 != 2 16:20, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wp: and Wt: pages

After the WP: and WT: stuff last week, pages starting with Wp: and Wt: (see Special:Prefixindex/Wp and Special:Prefixindex/Wt) became unaccessible. I assume that these were forgotten in the backend move. Can someone involved in the previous move fix this up? (i.e. move them to the Wikipedia: and Wikipedia_talk: namespaces with --DUP suffixes where necessary) --- RockMFR 21:33, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by "inaccessible". I just looked at this redirect and at WPCS International Incorporated; seems to work fine. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:18, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Articles beginning with "Wp:" or "Wt:". The colon can't be included in the prefixindex link for some reason (probably because it is now an alias for a namespace). --- RockMFR 01:59, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Articles beginning with "Wp:" or "Wt:". Sorry, I misread that, mostly (I suspect) because I really can't think of a topic that would begin with those three characters. Do you have a some specific examples? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:20, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
There are several hundred of these; I made a list at User:CBM/BadPrefix. Tim Starling handled some other inaccessible pages a few days ago. I'll point this out on bugzilla, and let the devs figure out how to resolve it. It's at bugzilla:12371. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:12, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Wp:0RR (for example) is now called Wikipedia:0RR, which is accessible. Are you saying that these were both existing with different content?--Patrick (talk) 16:49, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm saying that there is a page (pageid 12226886) on enwiki in namespace 0 titled "Wp:0RR", which is inaccessible. I made the list by running a query on toolserver for pages in namespace 0 whose names start with 'Wp:' or 'Wt:'. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:06, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
It is also strange that Special:Prefixindex/Wp gives redirects with names starting with "Wp:". It looks like there is no problem of inaccessible content but of excess names in page listings.--Patrick (talk) 17:20, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
(←) A developer ran a script to move the articles that were inaccessible to new names. When there were conflicts (the destination page already existed), the page gets moved to a new location with a name that indicates the conflict. I have made a list of these 'broken' moves at User:CBM/Broken. If anyone wants to help clean these up, please feel free. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:12, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I took care of them; almost all of them were duplicates, but a few required adding hatnotes to existing pages. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:40, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] missing history

On a related note, I've noticed some missing history on WP:HOTTIE. While it surly doesn't matter in that particular situation, it makes me wonder what might have gone missing in the history of other shortcuts, including deletion logs. -- Ned Scott 22:44, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

This also removed said redirect from my watchlist. -- Ned Scott 06:37, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Not to complain or nitpick. Just thought it was odd. There isn't likely going to be any problems as the result of this. -- Ned Scott 06:40, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] URL redirection

I noticed another issue with the way WP and WT is handled. While using a page anchor with a shortcut works with our internal links, it breaks for external links. For example, WP:NOT#DICT vs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOT#DICT . -- Ned Scott 06:34, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Err.. both links work fine for me. /wiki/WP: automatically becomes /wiki/Wikipedia: and the rest takes care of itself. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:36, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Ah, it seems this is only a problem on Safari. Never mind :) -- Ned Scott 06:39, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] converting

I have a laptop computer battery.I'ts a 14.5 volt but it does not tell the cells of the battery. can anyone tell me how many cells are in a 14.5 volt laptop battery. thanks

There is a computer section of the reference desk where you're much more likely to get a quick answer. You might also want to explain why you want to know this; sometimes that helps get a better answer. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:35, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Syntax problem

[Moved here from Help Desk.] Why doesn't the closing </b> (''') in front of the <br/> work on Template:Inappropriate person (source)? I'd expect the second line to be non-bold. -- Ddxc (talk) 21:53, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

This is not an explanation, but if you remove the newlines before and after the switch, it works. --teb728 t c 22:46, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Because ''' does not behave the same way as <b> or <strong>. In particular, the wikisyntax depends upon formatting and the position of newlines. Try, for example:

This text is bold. This text is not.

If you attempt the same thing with <b>, all text will be bold until a closing </b> is reached. In the template you linked to, the syntax is simply to complex for the wikiparser to really make much sense of. It's unable to identify the final "'''" as a closing for the opening bold sequence because there are parser functions, template inclusions, etc., in between, and so simply terminates the bolding sequence when it reaches a newline (again, different from <br />) rather than waiting until it finds a closing three apostrophes. In such cases, it's best to just be explicit and tell the parser exactly what you want it to do. In this case, the problem is best fixed by using <b> and </b> in the place of "'''". HTH. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for your explanations! I fixed it by replacing the ''' with <b> and </b>. -- Ddxc (talk) 04:44, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help with parser functions

Could someone please check out {{Infobox Martial artist}}? The test case that's being used right now does not pass any kickboxing-related parameters. The behavior I desire is that if parameters are passed, it will add up {{{kickboxingwins}}}, {{{kickboxinglosses}}}, {{{kickboxingdraws}}}, and {{{kickboxingncs}}}, and place them in the total line (already implemented). However, if neither of these four parameters are passed, the entire kickboxing section should not appear. If you can fix it for just this one section, I can implement in the other three myself. Thanks in advance! east.718 at 05:00, 10/24/2007

OK, never mind. I figured out that I can just use #switch like I did at {{MMArecordbox}}. east.718 at 05:31, 10/24/2007

Ready for archival. east.718 at 02:37, December 27, 2007 02:37, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SVG

How can I change the default size of an SVG in a gallery?

Ready for archival. east.718 at 02:38, December 27, 2007 02:38, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Auto signing

How do I embed "~~~~" into a Userspace template? I want to insert it into {{Discussion moved to}} and/or {{Discussion moved from}}. That way, when a user moves a discussion, the template will include the sig. —Markles 23:30, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Try ~~<includeonly>~~</includeonly> or similar. AmiDaniel (talk) 00:54, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
  • No, it doesn't work. It just copies the literal text, "~~~~." If I put all four tildes between the "include only"s, then it just autoinserts my signature at the time I edited the template, NOT the user's signature when the template is first transcluded. Any other ideas?—Markles 20:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't think that you can have it at the first transclude, only if it is substituted. -- Cobi(t|c|b) 20:54, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
      • Drat. Substituting defeats the beauty of the consistent template. Any other ideas?—Markles 20:56, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
        • You can make the signature a parameter; the user has to put the tildes as value. However, this has little advantage over ordinary signing, only that one can choose the position of the signature in the result.--Patrick (talk) 21:05, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
          Yeah, as far as I know you can only add a signature automatically when it's substituted. I would suggest double-templating using {{CURRENTUSER}}, but {{CURRENTUSER}} requires an extension that isn't enabled on wikimedia servers (hence, the redlink). --slakr\ talk / 21:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
          • How do you do it with your Sinebot?—Markles 21:28, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What is the best way to grammar check Wikipedia articles?

The Transhumanist 11:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

By manual inspection. –Pomte 12:52, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
I read a few years ago an article - it may have been by Bruce Tognazzini - claiming that nobody has ever used the grammar checkers in commercial word processing software, at least in English, because it is of so little use. Manual inspection is indeed the way. Tempshill (talk) 19:59, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Missing move button

The article Occupation of the Channel Islands has no move button. I've never seen an article without this button before. Does anyone know why the button isn't there? Lurker (said · done) 14:12, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Its currently protected so only sysops can move the article. I see the move tab and this is probably why. There may have been a recent upgrade to MediaWiki that hides the move button if the user doesn't have the access to move.↔NMajdan•talk 14:19, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
I've unprotected it since the move protection was about a year and a half ago and any disputes would be forgotten about by now. Tra (Talk) 17:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What is this crap? "Cite error"?

I'm getting "Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name cannot be a simple integer, use a descriptive title" on many, many articles. Who or what implemented this change?--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 22:13, 27 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by HisSpaceResearch (talk • contribs) 22:12, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Looks like all refs that have a number in their names are broken. This needs to be fixed ASAP, as I imagine thousands of people are currently breaking refs trying to fix this. Kaldari (talk) 22:16, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
It seems references which have numbers in them are generating an error. eg <ref name="bourne"> is ok but <ref name="bourne2005"> generates that error when the article page is displayed. Something needs fixing urgently! Barrylb (talk) 22:17, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Testing: test1[1] test2[2] test3[3].

  1. ^ test1
  2. ^ test2
  3. ^ test3

Indeed, Wikipedia barfs at any ref name with numbers in them... — Edokter • Talk • 22:18, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

It's been fixed already. --NE2 22:20, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

There was a bad check added, which has been fixed. Do a purge or null edit on pages you see the error incorrectly showing up on. --Brion VIBBER (talk) 22:21, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Its not fixed just yet. Ceoil (talk) 22:21, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Hit edit and save and it should be fine. --NE2 22:22, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Ah. Thanks. Ceoil (talk) 22:26, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Who do we kick this time? :) — Edokter • Talk • 22:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, we could shoot the mesenger :-) Ceoil (talk) 22:27, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hide "user page" link for anonymous users

Please see the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Hide "user page" link for anonymous users. —Remember the dot (talk) 03:19, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Namespace issues wrecking an article

We've got a problem causing an article to be unviewable.

All links to the movie Species: The Awakening end up redirecting to a nonexistent article on Wikispecies. There's no way to fix any redirects ... I was forced to recreate the article at Species--The Awakening. Is there anything more that can be done? Blueboy96 17:44, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Colon for an explanation of the situation. Anomie⚔ 18:16, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
That's the weirdest I've seen so far... There should be a solution to this; Mediawiki could easily tell space/project links apart from article titles by testing the presence of a space behind the colon. — Edokter • Talk • 18:36, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, and the article was still there as late as December 8. I can see it when I'm not signed in, but not when I'm signed in. Blueboy96 18:41, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
It looks like someone made the change around the 11th on Meta; see [2]. I don't know if it requires a dev to rescue the old version or if there is some way for a normal person to move it out from under the interwiki. Anomie⚔ 19:46, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
I've filed bugzilla:12404 about intelligently avoiding namespace conflicts like this. —Remember the dot (talk) 20:27, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't get it - why are things even being added to this list without first checking for conflicts? The meta admins should be responsible for checking all the Wikimedia projects for possible conflicts. Both Species: Quattro and Species: The Awakening need to be moved to different titles due to this. --- RockMFR 21:41, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

m:Interwiki map was updated 11 December [3] and currently says:
"A script copies the list below into the database fairly regularly (usually once in several months). Please do not change the format of this table, as the script depends on the format in order to update the database.
Last known interwiki database update: September 5, 2007"
Maybe there was a new update December 23 or 24 to cause this problem. Talk:Species: The Awakening still works but doesn't help getting to the article. The recreation at Species--The Awakening appears to be a GFDL violation since the article history with former contributors is unavailable (I assume Blueboy96 is not the sole author). The reason you can see it in some cases is probably that your harddisk or ISP has a cached copy. A copy of the old page can currently be found in Google's cache (click "Cached" at [4]). Google's cache says "retrieved on 23 Dec 2007 05:41:08 GMT." The cached Wikipedia page says "last modified 19:39, 8 December 2007". The same day as your visible version. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:25, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, if it's a GFDL violation, what can be done in the meantime until we can get to the article? Of course, if and when we can get to the old article, the logical solution would be to somehow move it to the place where I recreated it. Seems a bit odd that you can't recreate an article that is inaccessible due to a software glitch (presently) beyond our control. Blueboy96 03:39, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
It's Christmas and developers may have other things on their mind. I suppose no big harm is done by leaving Species--The Awakening for a little time until somebody can hopefully pull the original with history out of the black hole it got sucked into. I don't know where the final article will be and I wouldn't start updating links to point at Species--The Awakening, or work further on it. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:26, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll reply to all of these messages in one swoop. One December 10-ish, the species interwiki prefix was added; when the update script ran, it made any page that begins with Species suddenly become invalid. This is similar to what happened when WP: was added as a namespace alias and WP: pages were inaccessible. When pages exist prior to a namespace creation, when the namespace is created, they go to MediaWiki purgatory. They are entirely uneditable by regular users, even sysops; this includes history and deletion powers as well.

However, the devs, being as smart as they are, have a handy maintenance script called namespaceDupes.php. A sysadmin simply needs to run this and it will move the pages in the database where they will be accessible by normal users. I imagine no one realized that this particular conflict would occur, and thus the maintenance script hasn't been run yet.

To Remember the dot, et al.: MediaWiki has never allowed pages to begin with a space; the proposal to allow Species:_whatever will undoubtedly be resolved as WONTFIX, though I'll let a developer take care of that. The simple reason is that you don't want users adding spaces to the beginning of articles, that would be bad. Also, in the database, I imagine spaces would cause quite an issue.

As for the Species: The Awakening case, a simple Google search reveals that the page exists, but is in MediaWiki purgatory. Google has the page in its cache as being on en.wiki, but when you click the link it goes to Wikispecies. When the new page becomes accessible, the page histories will need to be merged or fixed in some manner, a task for a willing sysop.

Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:34, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, I think it's fine for me to reply here (going at the bottom would probably get my comment lost). What I came here to say, anyway, is that I tested the namespaceDupes.php script (thanks for pointing it out, MZMcBride!) on my own wiki, and it works, but the page I tested ended up on my watchlist, and now I can't get rid of it. It has the title of my project namespace, but it shows up with the main namespace pages in the edit view. Is there a maintenance script to fix those kinds of glitches, too? Since you seem to be such an expert... Just wondering. Tuvok[T@lk/Improve me] 13:44, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I answered my own question by digging around the maintenance/ subdirectory. I found cleanupWatchlist.php, which appears to just get rid of invalid watchlist entries. I do that a lot, too (answering my own question, that is). Hope I haven't bothered anyone. Tuvok[T@lk/Improve me] 14:13, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation. I think Blueboy96 has so far only worked on imitating the original article based on a rendered page without source access. If no further work is done on Species--The Awakening then nothing needs merging if the original comes back. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:55, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
MZMcBride, FWIW, would removing the interwiki link on meta: (not an ideal solution) resurrect this page? — xaosflux Talk 06:03, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
It should. However, it took about 15 days between the last Dec. 10 update and the sync to the servers, so a revert today would most likely take a while to go live. But, yes, if the interwiki prefix no longer exists, the pages come back from MediaWiki purgatory. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:17, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
About the space detection: I'm not saying that Mediawiki should allow spaces at the beginning of articles. I'm just saying that when it sees [[Species: The Awakening]] it should see the seemingly extra space and realize that the article is in the main namespace and not in the "Species" namespace. In other words, it should interpet [[Species: The Awakening]] as being an article in the main namespace, and [[Species:The Awakening]] as being http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Awakening. Currently, the software just assumes that when the user says [[Species: The Awakening]] they really meant [[Species:The Awakening]] and so it sends the user to WikiSpecies. —Remember the dot (talk) 06:19, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
I understand what you're trying to accomplish, however the database is currently set up in a way that every article title is one column and namespaces are assigned in another column via their numbers (i.e., ns:0 = (Main), ns:1 = Talk:, etc.). You're asking that, based on the presence of a space at the beginning of an article title (which is currently not allowed ever), that the software either treat a link as an interwiki link or as an on-wiki (Main) namespace link. It's simple enough for a human to see the difference, however I'm almost positive it would be incredibly tricky for the database / software to see the difference. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:31, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Let me try and explain this more clearly. The software sees [[Species: The Awakening]]. It must then separate the namespace, "Species", from the page name, "The Awakening". As it does that, it could look at the extra space after the colon and say to itself "There's a space at the beginning of the page name. Page names can't start with spaces. Therefore, this link must refer to a page in the main namespace and not a page in the Species namespace." Then it would pull "Species: The Awakening" out of the main namespace and display it, just like if there were no "Species" namespace.
Does that make more sense? —Remember the dot (talk) 06:47, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
It's not that I don't understand what you're saying, I'm trying to tell you that, to my knowledge, a change like that would be quite difficult, if not impossible, to make. All of MediaWiki's code is available online to download and test, and you are free to submit patches to Bugzilla, however, if there were a simple solution to this problem, I have confidence that one of the tens of developers who are very good at coding would have implemented it already. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:56, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
*sigh*...I have little experience with PHP, but I suppose I can take a crack at it when I have a good chunk of free time. The change really isn't that complicated; it only affects namespace resolution, not the underlying database. In any case, have a merry Christmas! —Remember the dot (talk) 07:18, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
OK, I got it working and have submitted a patch at bugzilla:12404. —Remember the dot (talk) 01:01, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
However, if the user types say Wikipedia: Village pump in the search bar or as a link, it goes directly to Wikipedia:Village pump. We wouldn't want it to try to access the mainspace page with that space. Will your patch eliminate this functionality? –Pomte 14:09, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Not really. If the user makes this mistake, then the first result on the search page will be Wikipedia:Village pump, so they shouldn't have much trouble finding the page. Also, we could create a redirect from Wikipedia: Village pump to Wikipedia:Village pump if necessary, kind of like how we create redirects for spelling errors. —Remember the dot (talk) 00:28, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Pages starting with "Species" without : still work. The only affected pages at [5] appear to be the article Species: The Awakening and a redirect to it at Species: Quattro, left by a move. I tracked down the move diff [6] and it works! Clicking "Newer edit" a lot of times also works and leads to the latest diff [7]. The source of the second latest version can be seen. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:37, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
The latest diff is here, and the edit link near "Revision as of 21:39, 8 December 2007" seems to work, but the "move" tab is also visible and seems to work. Hmmzzz... - Erik Baas (talk) 01:50, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
The move tab might be working since it links to Special:Movepage rather than &action=move. Unfortunately, when I tried to move the page from there, it gave the error 'Source or destination title is of a special type; cannot move pages from and into that namespace.' Tra (Talk) 02:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] General solution

The general solution (on the rare occasions) when an article is no longer accessible is to file a bug at bugzilla.wikimedia.org. Put the bug in the 'Wikimedia' product, and just say that you would like the old page to be renamed. The renaming is easily done by the developers using a maintenance script called namespaceDupes.php. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:25, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll put in a move request there... if someone hasn't beaten me to it already. — Edokter • Talk • 02:04, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Filed under bugzilla:12435. — Edokter • Talk • 02:10, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Was resolved this afternoon; Edokter took care of moving the page to Species - The Awakening after it was renamed by the devs. I changed the redirect at Species- Quattro as well. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:14, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Linking articles

Is there a bot or tool which automatically links words/names/etc that have articles? I'm trying to link artists and albums on the Impulse! Records discography. ThanksCosprings (talk) 20:16, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

No there isn't, and there isn't likely to ever be one: see the guideline Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:15, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox question: branching

Hi! I want to know if there's a way to fix Template:Infobox Algerian District to be able to show two images in a row or each image in its own row. As I know I'm not good at explaining, here are two examples: the article Rouïba District, as you can see, has two maps in the infobox, as the second map is "broad", so it won't be very clear if it is shown next to the first map. However, on article Djanet District, the map is "tall", so it is only a waste of space to make the second map on its own row, it would be better to have it like in the article Munich, where the map and the Coat of arms are on the same row. So is there a way to make this template able to either show them on the same row or each one on its own row (I mean, both things at the same time)? Or should I make an infobox for each one? TIA. --escondites 09:02, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

You can use e.g. a parameter "sidebyside"; if it has the value "yes" the template shows them side by side, otherwise one below the other; the branching code is much like that already used in the template, except that you use #ifeq.--Patrick (talk) 10:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! And you don't have a noob-compatible explanation of this ;-) ? --escondites 08:56, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
You have made a template with #if and parameters, and I gave a link to #ifeq. You could at least ask a more specific question and show me how far you have come.--Patrick (talk) 10:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
OK. So I have to replace this

{{#if:{{{map1<includeonly>|</includeonly>}}}| <!-- -->{{!}} colspan="2" style="text-align: center" {{!}} [[Image:{{{map1<noinclude>|Placeholder.png</noinclude>}}}|150px]]<br><small>''Map of Algeria highlighting {{{province}}} Province }}


by this?


{{#sidebyside:{{{map1<includeonly>|</includeonly>}}}| <!-- -->{{!}} colspan="2" style="text-align: center" {{!}} [[Image:{{{map1<noinclude>|Placeholder.png</noinclude>}}}|150px]]<br><small>''Map of Algeria highlighting {{{province}}} Province }}

escondites 11:06, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

The syntax is:
{{ #ifeq: {{{sidebyside|}}} | yes | code for images side by side | code for one image below the other }}
Patrick (talk) 13:00, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] <note> as well as <ref>

Has there been a proposal to make a <note> tag to compliment the <ref> tag. Most of the time when <ref> is used it is actually for a cited reference, but sometimes it is for adding a bit of extra information (ie a note). I just thought it could be an idea to separate these out. I know some articles use the old Note template system to achieve two lists (Refs and Notes) but that is long-winded and not so easy to manage. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to implement as it would be exactly the same as the Ref system but just have <note> and <notes /> instead. Chris_huhtalk 21:00, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I haven't studied it, but in theory it should be possible to just duplicate the ref part of Cite and make a new extension called Note, which would look for <note> tags instead of <ref> tags. Tuvok[T@lk/Improve me] 02:59, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
How would i go about suggesting this be done, is this the place to do it? Chris_huhtalk 13:59, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
You might do it here or at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). I actually wouldn't mind having both functions in the one Cite.php extension. Many of the supporting PHP code is already available, and it could be run on the <note> tags in addition to the <ref>s. Perhaps Brion or Ævar (the original author) can be convinced to write in the additional tag... Tuvok[T@lk/Improve me] 14:29, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
I left a proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) and also thought up something else (multiple lists of each). Chris_huhtalk 15:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Protecting empty pages

Can a dev give some guidance about the new feature whereby deleted pages may be protected directly? Specifically, is there any performance advantage to an indefinite protection vs one for a defined time? In other words, if I delete "Jimbo Wales on Wheels", should I protect it indefinitely, for six months, or does it not matter from a technical standpoint? --B (talk) 06:46, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, it is marginally better to protect it for a time period (stops the list of protected titles from being clogged up by old stuff that won't get created anyway), but it doesn't really matter — if indefinite protection from creation is warranted indefinitely, then you may go ahead and protect indefinitely. However, I would caution against blanket protection of every article that is deleted — it is probably better to only protect an article from creation after the second or third deletion (after other options, such as blocking the vandal account, have been explored). — Werdna talk 08:10, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Navigation templates

Is there a way to make a template made using Template:Navbox (a navigation template) hidden by default on a page? I mean, it does that automaticly when there are multiple navigation templates on a page, but what if the template should be hidden even if there's only one template on the page? --escondites 09:28, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

|state=collapsed (Template:Navbox/doc#Other).↔NMajdan•talk 14:33, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal: Automatic Unit Conversions

I was just reading Crawler-transporter, and unit inconsistencies in the article finally sent me over the edge. I understand that people throughout the world use different measurement systems, and I support that. However, it's very amateurish to have multiple unit systems mixed in the same article. The first sentence of the Specifications paragraph refers to pounds, tonnes, kilograms, and short tons! It's one thing to have articles with different spellings of words like color/colour, but quite another to have physical quantities described in different terms. Thus, I formulate the following proposal:

Describe units with specific metadata so they are identifiable. Then, allow users to set a personal option to view pages in SI or any other system of their choice. Articles would be rendered with all units in that system. Articles needing to refer to specific units (such as meter) would of course just not use the metadata and thereby not be automatically converted. Significant digits would be listed in the metadata and passed through the calculation. What do you think? 24.17.110.223 (talk) 19:10, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

There is {{Convert}} that helps automate conversions.↔NMajdan•talk 19:18, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Per page IP range blocking

I originally posted this over in the proposals section (as it requires both technical and policy changes to be implemented), but other than one comment that it sounds like a good idea, but I don't know if it would work, it attracted no attention, so I'm reposting this here to find out if it could be done (and if so then take it to policy to see if it should be done).

Generally speaking, I've noticed that the most persistent IP vandals tend to have a narrow focus on one topic for their vandalism and use an ISP that gives them a different IP each time they log on to the internet. Because such ISP's also tend to have non-vandal anonymous users, simply blocking the whole range of IP's isn't practical nor desirable, but if such ranges could be blocked on specific pages it would at a minimum allow for a more specific block than simple semi-protection, and because it is more specific, perhaps it would be considered good policy to leave it in place for longer periods of time. Caerwine Caer’s whines 21:45, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Ideally this would work for all IPs and registered users too. If it could be done (I don't think it would work within MW's current blocking system) it could be useful for things like topic bans as well. Mr.Z-man 00:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I have an evil perenially postponed plan™ to implement something like this — merging protection and blocking into one system, which would work by blocking any group of users, except any group of users, from doing any group of actions on any group of articles (specify what's necessary, and leave wildcards blank). I might get this done at some stage between now and 2025. — Werdna talk 11:54, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

That sounds... complicated. For this functionality, I would suggest something like an extra column in the ipblocks table for a pagename, checked against the pageid when seeing if a user can edit a specific page. The only issues with this is that it would require it to be possible to block a user multiple times if the blocks are on specific pages only and it would require checking multiple rows in the case of a user being blocked on multiple pages. Mr.Z-man 07:38, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Extra vertical space in the esoteric Template:FixBunching

Would someone please have a look at Template talk:FixBunching#Extra whitespace? and see if you can figure out what is causing the extra blank line? Thanks. MilesAgain (talk) 03:50, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Wierdly, {{FixBunching|beg}} produces <p><br></p> before its <table style="float: right;"> when it is not subst'ed, but not when it is subst'ed. Has anyone seen anything like that before? MilesAgain (talk) 08:48, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Case sensitivity of category names on pages inside them

Is there an equivalent to {{lowercase}} for categorization? For example, see the bottom of Bilious Paths, which should say µ-Ziq albums rather than Μ-Ziq albums. The original question is at WT:CAT. –Pomte 08:03, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

An alternative is putting &nbsp; before the µ.--Patrick (talk) 11:20, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
That would require the category itself to be named beginning with a space. -Freekee (talk) 17:23, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that is what I mean, the name starts with &nbsp;. It seems to work fine. Alternativly &#8203; (zero-width space) can be used.--Patrick (talk) 00:13, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help needed with Template:WikiProject Unionism

Resolved.

{{WikiProject Unionism}} has some strange glitch which affects its display when nested.

When it is given the parameter nested=yes it does indeed collapse and fit into the box, but it creates above it a space (see e.g. Talk:Ulster Protestant Action). Using Firefox's web devloper toolbar, this appears to be a <p> element.

Like the other wikiproject assessment templates, it uses some advanced syntax, and although I have tried various tweaks I can't see exactly what is causing the problem. Can any template experts have a go? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:28, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. The combination of HTML table and wikitable syntax there seems to have been causing the problem. Anomie⚔ 14:56, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
Brilliant. Thanks, Anomie. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:57, 29 December 2007 (UTC)